“ Is it? When we take a picture with a camera the things photographed and the light which brings it to the camera lens are outside of the camera, yet the photograph is recorded within. It’s suddenly stored within on the film, or now, in digital form. We didn’t manufacture the scene outside, or the light waves that brought the scene to the camera. They existed outside. – Ever heard of auras?

“You mean like haloes and such?”

“Yes. There are clairvoyant people who can see all sorts of things outside of people, things within people’s auras. A really competent clairvoyant can see emotions such as anger and jealousy, that sort of thing, in our auras. Some of ‘em say they’re seeing it in our emotional bodies. “ They come up as various moving colours forever changing shape as we think. Sorta like clouds around us. Nowadays we can even take moving pictures of them.”

“You trying to tell me anger and jealousy could be outside of us?”

“Depends what you mean by us.?”

“Eh?”

“Do we start somewhere in the middle of our physical bodies and end at our skin? Do we, as a person, end at the tips of the hair on our heads?”

“What are you getting at?”

“Give someone a cuddle and we can feel their body heat, right? We can even be standing close but not touching them and still feel the heat radiating from them. Are we feeling their body heat as something distinct from them? Or are we feeling them?”

“No, mate, we’re feeling what they’re radiating.”

“But that heat comes into you. You not only feel it on your skin, it warms you up, would you agree?

“Yes. People have survived exposure in the wild by cuddling up to their dogs.”

“What’s doing the warming?”

“Don’t know what you mean. Can you explain, please?

“Sure. Body heat is heat-energy. It’s energy. It is vibrations, wavelets of energy- so is your physical body. Yes, skin, fat, muscles, tendons, bones, all of it. They’re energy, too. Vibrations that radiate other energies. Your could say they are gross energies. But we have all sorts of subtle energies, such as those produced by our endocrine glands. Then, of course, there’s our body-heat.”

“So?”

“So how do we really know where we start and end? Do we really end at our skins?”

“You’ve lost me.”

“What I’m trying to tell you is that to say we are contained only within our skins is a commonly made arbitrary decision inculcated by our cultural conditioning. We assume it this way. That decision is based upon the way we perceive the universe, not how it is. Each of us thinks of ourselves as separate because our senses tell us this is the case. Also each of us thinks of ourselves as the centre of the universe. We’re in here. Everything else is out there.”

“And we are, if you ask me..”

“Yes, we are and we aren’t. We appear to be contained in our bodies. We believe our thinking only occurs within ourselves and no one else is affected by it unless we take a physical action. We think it all stops, as I said, at our skin, all this emotional stuff, the thinking part of us. We generate it. It stays within us – unless we speak or move. That’s our belief. We appear to be contained in our physical bodies, but if we are, in what part?”

“What part? Stupid question…in our brains.”

“But our brains are just energy, vibrations, wavelets. There is nothing constant about them except, maybe the patterns they’ve temporarily taken on; neural pathways, that sort of thing. So where abouts are we? Where, exactly?”

“You’ve lost me.”

“That I can understand. Because if you want to find out what you are, you’ll never find out with your brain. Your brain is an organ of the body.”

“Yeah…then what about our minds?”

“Ah, now you’re getting somewhere. But where do you think your mind is?”

“In your brain?”

“Some think so.”

“And you don’t?”

“No. Certainly not entirely. But let’s find out more, eh? Let’s read some more of the book…”

……………..

In our last post on this blog, regarding our book, “Who Stole Your Happiness, and how you canreclaim your rightful ownership,” we presented the book’s preface. We hope that what you read there prompted you to want to read further so…here is that ‘further.’ We present here the first part of the Introduction. Enjoy the read.

Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life,

the whole aim and end of human existence.

Aristotle

Greek Philosopher

A man had been searching for meaning in his life. Years went by. Frustrated, he changed jobs, careers, countries, searching, searching – nothing seemed to satisfy him. Then, at fifty years of age, immediately after attending an intense ten-day Vipassana Meditation course, meditating eleven hours a day in total silence, he undertook a *Rebirthing session. Probably because the Rebirthing session followed only one day after the arduous ten days of isolation and silence, he was regressed right back until the time he was born. This man experienced his beginning in his present life. It was then that the answer to his search for meaning was revealed to him:

He had been born to make people happy.

I know this story to be true, for I, Arthur Thomas Ware, am this man. More on this particular story will be revealed later. But this book is not about me, but about you, the reader. So let us get on…

Happiness, ah, happiness…we all want it. If you go into many of the search engines available today endeavoring to find a definition of the word, happiness, you’re liable to become quite frustrated – unhappy even. There are hundreds of references: books, essays, historical treatises, ancient and modern philosophical discourses, poems, quotes – everything, it seems, but a nice, terse definition one can get one’s ‘thinking gear’ around. There are articles by learned professors, clergymen, statesmen and lay people. Everyone but everyone seems to have an opinion about what it is – but no one can actually define it. What does become clear, however, is that although almost everyone is interested in happiness: very few seem to know much about it. So if someone stole ours, how on earth are we going to get it back?

*Rebirthing: commonly used term whereby a person is regressed back to the time they were born. Wikepedia: Rebirthing-Breathwork – a form of alternative medicine consisting of a breathing technique.

The dictionary endeavors to explain the word happy as follows: (of person or circumstance) to be “lucky, fortunate, contented with one’s lot.” It doesn’t even bother to try to explain “happiness,” probably because the lexicographer who put the dictionary together found it just too hard. This happiness thing seems to confuse everyone.

You see, so many people feel they know what happiness is because, at one time or another, they remember having experienced it. They know it exists. What they find difficult to comprehend is how they came to experience it in the first place. It seems to always be something that ‘once was,’ and perhaps maybe ‘found again.’ But how one finds it appears to be a mystery. Was it really stolen from us? Did we ever really have it?

This book is specifically designed so that you might pause and ponder. Pause and ponder what? On how you can reclaim your ownership to what is rightfully yours – happiness. You’ll notice that every title and subtitle asks you a question. Do pause and ponder. We cannot make you happy. We can only help you to evoke responses already within you. Those responses will more readily surface if you take your time…reflect…think back…allow the intuitive response. The so-called, “ah-ha,” or “eureka” moment can only come out of silence.